And in what must be a record at Balloon Juice, our third post of the day about Bill Kristol is from the “conservatives” at the National Review:
Rather than commenting on Bill Kristol’s provocative New York Times column today, “Will Obama Save Liberalism?”, I wanted to comment on the tag line: “This is William Kristol’s last column.”
For the Times, that is.
Bill Kristol will be heard from again and again, above all, of course, from his current perch at The Weekly Standard, but also, I gather, from a new perch at the Washington Post (where he will have a monthly column), as well as from his seat at Fox News and in other venues. He is easily among the most intelligent, creative, and articulate conservative voices in America—a fact, upon which I would be willing to bet a large sum of money, is what troubled the Times.
NRO is apparently not on the Red State mailing list.
BTW- for an explanation of the title, go here.
sgwhiteinfla
I am just waiting for the RedState/Freeper crowd to propose a new third party. Its gonna happen at least once in the next 4 years. Not saying one will be formed but they will for damn sure try to get the ball rolling.
Andrew
I will donate irresponsibly large sums of money to that third party.
JenJen
I think the question of the hour is this: Is the New York Times smart enough to hire Larison to write Kristol’s old column?
I rather doubt it. :-(
Apropos of nothing, I have a new blog post with details and photos from my Inauguration Experience as one of those stuck at "Heartbreak Ridge: The Blue Ticket Line to Nowhere." Just click on "JenJen" to check it out.
Please, to enjoy. :-)
Napoleon
Awesome title to this post!
kid bitzer
"a fact, upon which I would be willing to bet a large sum of money, is what troubled the Times."
jesus christ.
even my industrial-strength interpretive charity–the stuff that rescued jude the obscure from dougj’s verb-agreement calumny down-thread–cannot make that into grammatical english.
Jack Newhouse
"He is easily among the most intelligent, creative, and articulate conservative voices in America"
And that sums up perfectly what is wrong with conservatism in America.
TheFountainHead
I’m so confused!! Who is this mysterious Kristol man!? Conservative? Liberal? Animal? Vegetable?
ed
compare to
This may well be a case of life imitating art.
Tony J
Fixt.
Incertus
I.e. The Times thought "if this is the best the conservatives have to offer, then they’re totally fucked." No?
Krista
The disconnect with reality is mind-boggling. Evidently, your country is a conservative country. Except for the fact that it’s full of liberals. But the only liberals are the out-of-touch elite. So it really is a country full of conservatives. Except that the only true conservatives are Sarah Palin and the denizens of RedState. So they’re grossly outnumbered by the evil liberals. But they don’t count, ’cause they’re not really American anyway.
I think I need to lie down now.
Tom
No, it’s just that the national review is not a "real" conservative publication.
amorphous
@sgwhiteinfla: No way. You’re not serious, are you? There’s no way they propose a third party. Isn’t it infinitely obvious yet that they don’t actually have a philosophy of their own? No principles that actually guide them? Somewhere along the line they got the name "Republican" attached to themselves and decided that their only political belief was "lock-step" and they wouldn’t for a moment question the authority of their party SO LONG AS their party has absolute power. They’ll simply spend the next couple of years trying to redefine "conservative" or "Republican" as "whatever it takes for us to win and defeat the evil Liberals." Doesn’t matter if that’s actual fiscal conservatism, libertarianism, Christianism, whatever coalition it takes and whatever "leader" emerges, that is the teat that they’ll next suckle at.
Tony J
Uh, if Post 8 appeared without strikethroughs on all the silly bits, I’m obviously reminded of the struggles of Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Rick Astley in getting their message out past the interference of Teh Man, and I’m proud to include myself in their number.
TenguPhule
John, the day is still young.
Zifnab
Hey, here’s a thought. Rather than papers trying to balance themselves with X "conservatives" and Y "liberals", would it be possible to include an article a month from a pundit who actually knows what he or she is talking about?
I’d rather have a whole page full of conservative intellectuals than one more faux-liberal rant by David Brooks or Mauren Dowd.
Instead, we’ll likely just see another round of musical chairs in which all the columnists in given paper A that didn’t do well get recycled into given paper B. And visa versa.
The NYTimes hit one out of the park when they picked up Paul Krugman, and not because he’s a "liberal". The man has actual coherent thoughts and can expound upon them without drooling on the keyboard. Why can’t we get more of those guys?
The Moar You Know
@Krista:
If:
conservatives = awesome Real Americans
liberals = evil shitbags not worthy of the right to live
then:
America is a center-right nation
I don’t see what the problem is here, Krista. Anyone with massive brain damage or an inabilty to deal with reality can figure this out just fine.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Krista:
It could be worse. We could be (shudder) Canadian.
TR
That’s an accurate assessment if by "creative" the author meant "making shit up constantly."
burnspbesq
Ta-Nehisi Coates came very close to nailing the metaphor for Kristol’s tenure at the times. I would say it differently, however. Having Krugman and Kristol on the same op-ed page on the same day is akin to asking Adam Morrison to guard Kobe. It’s always going to be pathetic.
Jon
"He is easily among the most intelligent, creative, and articulate conservative voices in America…"
And that, really, is all one needs to know about conservatism in America.
Warren Terra
Hey, they said it, I didn’t. Still, what a thing to brag about. If I were on their side, I’d try to hide that "fact".
Lev
If Bill Kristol is one of the best spokesmen for modern conservatism, then you might as well inaugurate an entire generation of liberal political power. Dan Quayle’s brain has been living up to his name this past year.
Krista
True. It’s a fate worse than death.
Eric U.
I would like an honest conservative in my paper. The problem is that they are much too rare, and immediately excommunicated from the republican party. Look at someone like Kevin Phillips. He should be a republican. But they can’t allow him to be a republican because he’s honest.
cleek
without a doubt.
and that’s why you lost.
Tonal Crow
Initially I criticized the Times for hiring Kristol. He has, however, been so consistently and transparently wrong and irresponsible that I’m sorry to see him go. Unintentionally, he did more than any 5 other columnists to expose the Right’s moral, philosophical, and executive bankruptcy.
MR Bill
And we could call it, with props to Monty Python, The Silly Party.
NonyNony
Man, NRO doesn’t think much of the intelligence, creativity, or speaking ability of most conservatives.
And I’ll imagine what actually troubled the Times was how consistently wrong Kristol’s columns were. Retractions, corrections, lousy reasoning – they wanted a conservative on their pages and instead they got a a guy whose claim to fame was that his Daddy was a famous conservative, whose stances on issues were completely easy to beat up, and who was often verifiably wrong on matters of fact.
Unfortunately, if you want a conservative commentator who is going to toe the Republican line, that’s what you’re going to get on your pages. Because the straw conservatism that Republicans espouse really is that shoddily reasoned, poorly argued, and devoid of facts.
And if the Times steps outside the Party cheerleaders to get a conservative voice, they’re going to be pilloried for putting a "liberal" on the page and calling him a conservative. I’d bet if Larison got the spot he’d get no more than a month’s worth of columns out before the Times got a lot of nasty feedback about that "horrible liberal Daniel Larison".
Shalimar
Since when does the ability to pull lies out of orifices ordinary humans don’t even have qualify as creativity?
HyperIon
I wish you would adopt the SadlyNo approach and always refer to NRO as America’s Shittiest Website with the little TM thingy.
4tehlulz
@MR Bill: I think the Donner Party would be a more-appropriate moniker for that party.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@TheFountainHead:
I’m going to go with "mineral". It best explains the density.
Joshua Norton
My. They deserve props just for finding so many ways to say "consistently wrong" and making it sound like a good thing.
boonagain
@JenJen:
Jen,
I was there,too.
I was at the Washington Monument!!
jim
I hear you, zifnab. The problem is, most conservatives who know anything about what they are talking about, are now completely at odds with the rest of "conservatism" as a political "movement" (with no clear direction or goals except "Stop! I want! Waaahhh!).
And those rare conservatives who know what the hell they’re talking about, have probably have been at odds with the rest for years. It’s just GWB and his mind-blowing administration that have really brought their differences front-and-center.
I mean, a paleocon like Pat Buchanan sounds reasonable next to the rest of ’em! What the heck are they supposed to do with that?
At least we now get to see Paul Krugman filet and charbroil George Will’s BS talking points. Before the economic meltdown, we didn’t even get to see that.
jim
The Manchurian Pundit?
Perhaps the NRO is the hypnotized platoon, to Bill Kristol’s Raymond Shaw
JenJen
@boonagain:
Boon, sounds like you probably had a better experience than I did. In 2012, I’ll forgo trying to get "tickets to nowhere" and just head for The Mall!
Would love to hear more about everyone’s experience at the Inauguration, since mine (below) is a little heartbreaking (but trust me, I had a blast!).
http://tavernwench.blogspot.com/2009/01/inauguration-2009-blue-ticket-to.html
mellowjohn
Kristol "is easily among the most intelligent, creative, and articulate conservative voices in America."
that’s like being the world’s tallest midget, isn’t it.
(and tho i am a big randy newman fan, the previous sentence should in no way be taken as a slam at little people. thank you.)
Faux News
I was thinking more like "The Know Nothing Party 2.0" but I think the Republicans already have that distinction.
Funkhauser
Not to point out the obvious, but they do know that the original agreement was for only one year, right?
On the subject of defensible conservatism, mainly for our host, see Mickey Edwards on Saturday at the LA Times. The column ends as follows:
ricky
Speaking of Pitbulls on the Pantleg of opportunity, many of the people suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome
never give him credit for multi tasking. Despite leaving the oil business to take over (be handed the role of front man)
the Texas Rangers baseball franchise, Bush managed to equal his annual oil production average every year he was in
the baseball business.
Catsy
I think all the crazy elements of the Republican Party–a category which is currently quite broad–should in fact break off and form a third party. Since they’re so enamored of Orwellian buzzwords, they could call it the Freedom Party.
J Royce
Eric says: "I would like an honest conservative in my paper. The problem is that they are much too rare, and immediately excommunicated from the republican party.
That’s because an honest conservative is a liberal.
Conservatism is about hierarchy and class: they have it and are On Top, you don’t and are Owned. It’s about Kings ruling the peasants. They are the Winners by (coded) definition!
If a former Con loses power, he is no longer a King to worship. Therefore, no longer a Conservative. In fact, since Kings don’t "lose" then that loser never WAS truly Conservative and was only a pretender misleading his noble followers.
See how sensible that is? This is why Conservatism is a gateway to fascism: one charismatic Winner on a balcony and they’ve found their new King.
scarshapedstar
Was this ghostwritten by Sarah Palin?
HyperIon
humping the leg or biting it?
J. Michael Neal
I think it’s an attempt to generate electricity from the flow of air into a vacuum.
Mister Colorful Analogy
Hyperlon @31:
Yes, please. In fact, I’d call it just being accurate, as NRO is the first site returned for a Google search for America’s Shittiest Website.
That just makes me smile.